Scale Smarter, Not Harder: The Ultimate Guide to Using OPM

Brett McCollum (00:00.889)
Welcome back to the show everybody. I’m your host Brett McCollum and I am here today with Bethany LaFlam. And today we’re going to be talking about scaling your real estate leveraging OPM. Before we do guys, here at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to two to five X their businesses and allow them to build the business they’ve always wanted and live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Bethany, how are you?

Bethany (00:26.678)
I’m doing great. Thanks for having me today.

Brett McCollum (00:28.389)
Thank you for being here. This is gonna be a great show. I cannot wait to talk about it definitely a We talked a little pre-show definitely like getting to learn some of legal complexity and your expertise so Guys buckle up because this is going to be chock full of information that is applicable to your daily life now So but yeah before we get kind of get into everything, you know talk all the things Bethany Can you tell us a little more like who are you some background? How’d you get into?

you know, your profession, that sort of thing.

Bethany (01:01.986)
Well, I’m a lawyer because when I was a kid, I was convinced that I was smart. And the only way that smart girls got out of Ohio was to go to law school or medical school. And I realized pretty quickly in pre-med that medical school wasn’t gonna be for me. So, cool it was. near Cleveland.

Brett McCollum (01:15.577)
Yeah, yeah. Where in Ohio? I mean, same. I’m, what, what, what city?

Bethany (01:23.106)
Okay, so I graduated from North Ridgeville High School. I have family in Modena, yeah. That’s awesome. The Atkinsons lived in Modena. So, yeah, but Ohio’s a great place to be from, but I didn’t really want to stay there, right? So I know you’re in Florida now where it’s sunny and warm. I’m in California where it’s sunny and warm. And we didn’t know about real estate investing when I was poor.

Brett McCollum (01:25.893)
Okay, I’m from Medina, so like, we’re right, yeah. Yeah, very cool, sorry, I don’t mean to cut you off.

Brett McCollum (01:43.014)
Yes.

Bethany (01:51.886)
It was just sort of like get a high paying job and get out. Didn’t know about entrepreneurship, all the things. So I knew I could study, I knew I could work hard, I knew I could get good grades. So when it came time to go to law school, I left for California and never looked back and started practicing law and litigation, which is just toiling and toiling. I was building 2,000 hours a year and commuting from Orange County to Los Angeles, which is like a three hour commute some days.

Brett McCollum (02:18.979)
What kind of practice was that when it was in litigation?

Bethany (02:23.276)
So it was complex litigation and I spent all day helping the older lawyers prepare for trial and do all the research and the work. And then at night I would help prep for the next day when they would go sleep. So I was on these huge massive cases where I was a baby lawyer still, so I didn’t get to go to court. I just got to like hand the briefcase to the real lawyer so that’s the court. So it was not fun.

Brett McCollum (02:36.465)
Ugh.

Brett McCollum (02:47.515)
Yeah, you gotta earn your keep Bethany.

Bethany (02:50.574)
Yeah, that’s exactly right. I was like the lord of the paralegals, you know? And so I didn’t love it and I got tired of the commute. And so I actually left there to go to another firm thinking that I was going to get some actual real estate litigation experience. And I very quickly learned that what they really wanted me to do was kick people out of their mobile home parks. And I was like, no, thank you. I’m not going to. So I left and I started my own firm.

Brett McCollum (02:52.155)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (03:16.337)
This doesn’t feel very good.

Bethany (03:20.746)
And a lot of people gave me that look. Brave. So I was in a new market with no mentors because I was in Orange County. I no mentors, two years of experience, no clients, just learning on my own. So I did everything the hard way. I would never recommend doing that because brave can be mistaken for stupid sometimes.

Brett McCollum (03:23.825)
Yeah, no, that’s amazing. that’s everybody that looks at us that way. We’re entrepreneurs. Everybody looks at us weird like that.

Bethany (03:45.809)
I started to teach myself transactions law because I really loved building things. loved when I figured it out, I loved working with entrepreneurs and I realized I was a bit of an entrepreneur. that went from there to doing mergers and acquisitions. I was working with a lot of startup companies, tech companies, aerospace, and doing securities work, which is basically just helping people raise capital legally, right?

Brett McCollum (04:09.937)
Right.

Bethany (04:10.062)
big complex deals, whatever, but I was getting burned out though. I was on my own. I had a couple of partners here and there, but it was, again, still doing everything the hard way. So I decided to leave the practice of for a little while and go start my own fund because I was like, well, know, coaches don’t play, I wanna play, right? And so I was like, you know, I’ve been practicing for a few years. I’ve seen a lot of you. This was back in 2015 and I don’t…

Brett McCollum (04:25.137)
I know how to do it.

Brett McCollum (04:32.123)
When was this, give or take?

Brett McCollum (04:36.411)
Okay.

Bethany (04:38.542)
know if you recall, but in 2015, the world started to get a little bit wonky and politics started to get a little wonky and investors, foreign investors is what I was dealing with, were like, we’re going to wait and see what happens with this election before we put our money. So, you know, but I had this brilliant, very complicated fund and it was so complicated that I couldn’t really make anybody understand. Right. So we had the real estate development.

Brett McCollum (04:58.577)
Mm.

Bethany (05:05.762)
with tech and all these things and my heart was in the right place and my head had figured out all the legal structures but I was just not able to get investors comfortable with the idea that we were gonna do both real estate development and tech and all the things. Because as you probably know, usually real estate investors live in different bodies than tech investors. And so they’re not always, I know a few that do both but they’re not always in the same body. So I failed miserably. Luckily I did not raise $50 million before I failed. I failed fairly early.

Brett McCollum (05:23.643)
Sure.

Bethany (05:34.778)
But I did try to keep it going for a long time. So I learned all the lessons in that couple of years. Right? I lost all my money. I used up all my savings. I shot my credit. My confidence was garbage at that point. And it was sort of like because I’d failed and I’d lost some partners money, I felt like I wasn’t allowed to succeed from there. So, you know, then I met my former law partner, Mauricio Roald, and he had been coming out of a very serious illness.

Brett McCollum (05:53.935)
Mm-hmm.

Bethany (06:03.468)
And he needed someone to help him run his real estate syndication practice. And I was like, all right, I’ll help you for a little while while I lick my wounds and figure out what’s next. But this isn’t, I don’t live here. This isn’t what I’m doing. And eight years later, he’s retired. running the firm. So I learned that it wasn’t law that I hated. It was the grind and the tech bros and the, you know, that life where I was treated like the help that I hated. really love real estate investors. I love helping people.

Brett McCollum (06:20.326)
Yeah.

Bethany (06:32.578)
build something to escape their W-2. I love helping people strategize about how to create a legacy for their kids. And so that’s the part that I really love. So I fell in love with it and now here we are. Later.

Brett McCollum (06:42.491)
Wow, that’s incredible. Let me go back a little bit, because just to highlight for just a brief moment, you mentioned, and I think this is a story that if you’ve been in business long enough, I think a lot of people have had some version of this in some way. it real estate, be it in the law practice, be it in whatever sense of business. If you owned a business or you’ve been, you went through a season of hurt.

Right? Lost this and then the confidence side of it. And you said, you made the comment that you said, I didn’t feel I was worthy enough to succeed.

Bethany (07:16.076)
Yeah, that’s right.

Brett McCollum (07:18.729)
I resonate on that very strongly, you know, because we are our own worst critic, right? Like, like that’s, it’s kind of cliche almost to say. And I think when I, when I heard you say that, I was like, yeah, when it’s on the struggle, when I, when it’s because of something I, you didn’t have enough, by the way, my wife said this to me the other day, you don’t have enough control to cause things to happen the way they did.

Bethany (07:47.554)
Yeah, yeah, like who do think you are, right?

Brett McCollum (07:49.957)
Right? But we as entrepreneurs go, yeah, but, but I did, you know, we, then you project this thing of, or at least I have projected this thing of, yeah, but now like I’m going to go today. I’m going out to a baseball game with my family and I’m going to enjoy it. Right? But if I was going through that at the time, maybe I wouldn’t let myself enjoy that because I don’t feel like I’m allowed to. Did you, is that kind of what you were saying there?

Bethany (08:13.688)
Yeah. I felt like if I was awake, I needed to be working and building and,

like just toiling and if I was sleeping I better hurry up and wake up so I can get back to it. I, you know, it was really a struggle because also I grew up with that, you know, Midwestern mindset of you aren’t worth anything if you don’t work harder than everyone else. Right? And, you know, that’s how I thought I had my value to the world was to work harder than everyone else. And how I thought I was going to not be broke too, which by the way, how many hardworking people do you know that are so broke? That’s not it. That’s not that.

Brett McCollum (08:36.251)
that part.

Brett McCollum (08:47.493)
Yep. That’s not the formula. Yeah. Yeah.

Bethany (08:50.284)
Yeah, took a lot of money in coaching and work on myself to figure that out though.

Brett McCollum (08:56.401)
Yeah, and there is a beauty in going through and coming out the other side to be able to like go back to that moment and like, man, I was there. Thank God I’m not there now and have that perspective of, wow, like, you know, and I get it though. And I think a lot of people listening, well, that’s why I wanted to come back it for a second is I think a lot of people listening will go, yeah. I really glad you said that though, because like,

Bethany (09:09.527)
Yeah.

Bethany (09:17.166)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (09:25.209)
You don’t have to live in that place of, you know.

Bethany (09:27.308)
No, you can’t live there. You’re not showing up the best for your kids or your family or your friends or your business if you live there. You just can’t.

Brett McCollum (09:35.109)
Yeah, yeah, that’s incredible. So fast forward eight years now after that, like, you you’ve got, you’re running the practice now. more or less, is it more on the syndication side still, or what is the main focus of the practice?

Bethany (09:52.852)
Our main focus is helping real estate investors scale by leveraging other people’s money legally. So what we do is the compliance when someone’s going to raise money from passive investors, we help them do that legally because everyone’s so afraid of it as they should be because there’s a lot of rules around it. And so it’s all real estate investors and helping them raise money. That’s it. And so we are really super good at it. We’ve got it really dialed in. And I find that that helps us stand apart from even some of the large firms that do syndications.

I worked at a firm years ago where we wouldn’t even look at a PPM, which is a private placement memorandum for anybody who’s listening, which is just a disclosure document that you need to use if you’re going to raise money. We wouldn’t touch those for less than $25,000 just because of the risk and the pain in the ass of it and whatever. And we’ve got this dialed in so much because most mom and pop real estate investors, they don’t have $25,000 to put toward legal. That’s what a big tech firm with venture can pay.

Brett McCollum (10:46.351)
Right.

Brett McCollum (10:52.251)
Yeah, so kind of gearing back a little bit, let’s do some basic definitions of to catch people up a little bit. On the syndication side of things, and you were talking raising capital from other private investors into a fund, it’s not the same as, hey Bethany, the private investor, I’m gonna go flip one house, will you lend me the money to flip this, that, you know, or paraphrasing, making it oversimplified. When…

Bethany (10:58.114)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (11:21.401)
as the investor do I need to really consult with Beth, with your firm and where does that begin? You know, like, like in kind of what are the like basic, like where do you begin at with that? Cause like some people are going like, well, I’ve bought multifam. I’ve bought the, you know, like, and I use investors to help me with this. When do they really need to start having some legal concern of like, you need to start talking to me now if you’re thinking about doing X like kind of parameters.

Bethany (11:49.038)
So where I get involved is when you’re selling securities. Okay, so what is a security? And a lot of people are gonna get nervous when they first hear me say it. Don’t panic, because if you accidentally sold securities, you’re probably not going to jail. So we can go back to that, probably. So a security, when you’re taking money from passive investors, so it’s a common enterprise, this indication is really just you’re pulling resources to go buy something that any one of you might not have been able to buy on your own, right? So you’re gonna bring in passive

Brett McCollum (12:03.249)
You

Troll.

Bethany (12:19.012)
investors where they’re putting in their money, they expect a return, and they expect that return to be generated from your efforts. So a common enterprise, money.

passive, they expect a return based on your activities, then you’ve sold a security, if that’s the case. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a low dollar amount, it doesn’t matter if it’s just one person, it could still be a security. The part where people panic is the very first word in the definition of security is note. People are like, this is a promissory note, no big deal, it’s not a security. Actually, the default is that a note is a security, but it’s what’s called in law a rebuttable presumption, which means if you have enough good facts to

Brett McCollum (12:47.473)
Hmm.

Bethany (12:59.664)
that it’s actually not a security, you could be okay. So that’s why I said don’t panic right away. Those who are flipping, it’s usually a short-term note, less than nine months, it’s not a security. If it’s secured by the real estate in first position, it’s not a security. you know, most of your flippers are not selling securities. So I say that up front so they’re not, because most people, they start to panic and then they don’t listen to what I say after that.

Brett McCollum (13:18.917)
Right.

Bethany (13:19.948)
So if you’re selling securities though, that’s when we get involved. Now, if you’re not raising a lot of money, then there are some things we can do to help you not accidentally sell securities. So what I always tell people is my job is to help people practice safe SEC. The SEC is the Securities and Exchange Commission. They care about security. So I help you practice safe SEC. But you should only engage in SEC if you are ready and with people that you trust. So if you’re not ready, then I can help you effectively abstain. So if you’re not ready, I could teach you how to turn it into a joint venture.

or something that’s not gonna get you over into the world of securities. And people tend to feel comforted by the effect of, I’m not gonna accidentally trip over and fall into securities law. We won’t let you do that.

Brett McCollum (14:01.006)
Right.

Practice safe set guys. That’s what she’s saying. I love that. That’s a really good, that’s really good. Yeah, and that’s a great explanation because I know like a lot of the people that are, I mean, I talk to people all the time and they’re like, and we’re going to do this, we’re going to start raising capital, we’re going to do this. And I’m like, there are ways to do it and you better know how to do it properly. You know, cause there are some, and I’m sure you’ve seen it, some ignorance is not always bliss, right? Like you can’t,

Bethany (14:05.486)
I always use protection.

Bethany (14:32.2)
LCC does not accept that as an excuse.

Brett McCollum (14:35.043)
Yeah, and I know that like a lot of, you know, folks that were it’s like, I had the intent was good. It wasn’t it was pure even like I it was and then something happened, you know, and yeah.

Bethany (14:41.496)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bethany (14:48.118)
Yeah, and to be clear, if the intent was good and you’re not actively trying to screw people over, you’re probably not going go to jail, but there still could be penalties. You could still owe that money back where you thought it was an investment. Now it became sort of a loan because you’ve got to pay it back. There could be fines. You could be forbidden from raising money ever again. You know, there’s still some pretty serious things. You know, bad press, all the things, right? So, I it doesn’t have to be jail to be bad, right?

Brett McCollum (15:12.753)
I mean, I guess that’s kind of a good segue into this question. kind of touched, know, pretty sure we’re getting to know each other a little bit more. So a lot of people that are, they have syndications and they’re giving people like this guarantee, let’s say. And let’s say just for example, they started raising this capital in 2022. Okay. Rates are still low.

Bethany (15:38.595)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (15:38.701)
Market still looks good and they’re raising, let’s be honest, most of these people are raising capital. It’s not, I mean, I shouldn’t put everybody in one box, in one bucket, but the apartment people, those guys and gals that are raising for like, hey, I’m raising for 500 units of this, and you’re talking, you got 12 million, 16 million, things like this. And they’re gonna give, hey, you’re gonna get this return and this amount of time, and that’s the sale to the passive investor. And now,

Bethany (16:06.208)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (16:08.443)
Fast forward and rates are not at four, for that product maybe eight, nine. And now insurance isn’t what it used to be, now it’s this. Now taxes aren’t this, now it’s this. And that’s that perfect storm where they all come together and ask me how I learned this lesson. This is a real story. And then wow, now you have to call your investors.

Bethany (16:26.04)
Yep.

Bethany (16:29.686)
Yeah. Well…

Brett McCollum (16:37.487)
You remember that money you lended on this? What are you guys like? How do you best tell people like because I mean, again, they raise it properly. They did their due diligence ahead of time. They didn’t do things out of malice or ill intent. But then the market shifts. What are you guys seeing with that today? are in kind of a little bit of like tell me a little more about your thoughts are in that space.

Bethany (17:03.544)
Yeah, the number of calls that I got a few months ago on how do I do a capital call? don’t know. What do I do? Because, you know, we didn’t really have to deal with that in 21 and early 22. was like everyone’s just raining money and you trip over a property and it was going to get returns. you know, like we talked about before the show, everyone’s a genius in 21, right? And what we found was people calling and asking, OK, how do I do a capital call? And this is actually why I changed the structure of my firm, which we can talk about in a bit. The biggest thing, all things, other things being equal, meaning you did all the right

You did all the disclosures you were supposed to do. You had a good attorney, a good CPA. You’ve done the things you were supposed to do. So this is just the market shift, okay? So let’s assume all the things are true. Communication is the most important thing you have on your side because it’s surprised people who sue.

Investors, if they’re sophisticated enough or accredited to have gotten into your deal, right, if they have any business being a passive investor in your deal, then they understand that there was risk, right? They understand how this works. Hopefully this wasn’t their first investment. Hopefully it wasn’t the last of their money. It sucks to lose money, but that is why you have to have investors that are at least sophisticated, if not higher level of understanding that. So if you’re communicating with them and you’re letting them know, here’s what’s going on, here’s how we’re trying to pivot, here’s how we’re negotiating,

with the lender, here’s how we’re, know, whatever, here’s what we’re doing to try to handle all the things flying at us in this crazy market. If you don’t bear your head in the sand and you say in front of it, most investors are going to understand this is how it goes sometimes. I knew this going in and you told me going in even if I didn’t know before because you gave me a PPM. They told me all the risks and I’m a responsible investor so I read it, right? All hundred pages of it, right?

Brett McCollum (18:44.495)
I’m sure they did.

Bethany (18:45.578)
Right, yeah. but communication, because that’s gonna protect you and them. It’s gonna protect you because people can’t say, I didn’t know. Well, I told you in the PPM, I told you in every quarterly update, I’ve been telling you ahead of time every time something happens, this is what I’ve done, I’m sorry, there was nothing else I could do. Right? And it still sucks, right? It still sucks. Like, no one’s happy about losing money. And there are some people that maybe just don’t have the emotional intelligence to not lash out and be mad at you. People are gonna be mad at you.

They are. And it doesn’t mean that you’re liable though. And that is kind of going back to the earlier conversation we had of you’re going to have to get used to the fact that sometimes people are going be mad at you and you just can’t live there.

Brett McCollum (19:27.12)
Right.

Bethany (19:27.914)
So, know, that’s not even really legal. Well, it is legal advice though, because it does create liability if you bury your head in the sand and you don’t talk to your investors and tell them what’s going on. You’ve got an ongoing duty to them as the deal progresses to let them know what’s happening. And you also have a duty to try to preserve their capital, right? But you don’t have a duty, and this is important, you don’t have a duty to sacrifice yourself or your own capital to preserve their capital.

Brett McCollum (19:37.713)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (19:57.115)
Mm-hmm.

Bethany (19:57.334)
Right? You hear people say all the time, like, I want to see, you don’t have to suffer. Now, you shouldn’t be taking distributions if you’re not giving distributions. Of course, that’s actually illegal. But you don’t have to, like, take out a second on your home to give them their money back. They invested. They’re all big boys and girls. So my point is you don’t need to get on the struggle bus just to preserve this, you know, because you feel bad about it. You know, and frankly, I actually think that’s a red flag because then it’s like, did you do something wrong? Why are you doing that?

Brett McCollum (20:03.857)
Correct.

Brett McCollum (20:16.208)
Right.

Brett McCollum (20:19.685)
Right.

Bethany (20:27.67)
You know, and I think that’s important because people, know, during COVID, when everything just shut down, the number of calls I got from experienced syndicators, like, do I have to give them their money back now? No, no, it’s an investment. No one could have predicted COVID. I mean, I guess there people that might argue could have, that’s a different show, but you know, we didn’t predict COVID, right?

Brett McCollum (20:45.723)
Right.

Brett McCollum (20:51.611)
We could put our tin hats on. I’m kidding.

Bethany (20:54.958)
I’m not going to get canceled today. So, no, we couldn’t have predicted COVID. And so, no, of course you’re not responsible for giving that money back. And then I say it like that as though, of course you should have known. That’s why I have a job, right? I’m here because not everybody knows all the things. So we guide people from going down this whole scared path of like, I don’t have to figure out a way to give everybody their money back because of a global pandemic, you know? And so I think it’s just approaching things from very factual, logical, non-emotional

Brett McCollum (21:18.427)
Yeah.

Bethany (21:24.912)
which is hard when people have a lot of money on the line.

Brett McCollum (21:27.473)
Really? I mean money’s a very emotional thing, right? I mean, there’s no two ways to say it. It is hyper emotional. People lose friendships, family, everything over money. And that’s a difficult thing. having somebody in your corner like you and what you guys do to make sure that you’re

Bethany (21:31.32)
Yeah.

Bethany (21:36.63)
It is. Yeah.

Bethany (21:45.698)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (21:55.675)
following best practices and doing the right things upfront before it ever, if it becomes a problem, there’s some security in knowing, sorry, security, and knowing, you know, you, okay, you know what, I didn’t do this the wrong way, I didn’t do this, I’ve done everything right, it didn’t go well, now what? And then you still have somebody on the now what side to say, hey, now what, Bethany? And then can guide them in that too. That’s a really beautiful and powerful thing that you’ve got. I love that.

Bethany (22:04.706)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (22:23.569)
You mentioned kind of a little bit in so talking that you’ve kind of done some transition inside of what you guys are doing. What does that mean?

Bethany (22:30.722)
Yeah.

So we used to try, we would charge clients just on a flat fee basis. And because I don’t like to keep track of my hours, nobody likes to our hourly attorneys. Nobody does. It’s not efficient. It rewards inefficiency. It rewards just, you know, gabbing and nobody likes it. We don’t like to keep track of our time. You don’t like to pay to call me. So we did a flat fee for a long time, but what it was is very, very transactional, right? You call me when you’re under contract or you call me when you have an LOI signed. We do all your disclosures.

Brett McCollum (22:56.431)
Right. Yeah.

Bethany (23:02.51)
raising money, we’re out. Right? So then if you call me and you’re like, okay, but how do I do a capital call? Okay, my investors have questions. Okay. So we decided just recently that now we have a subscription based model where you can get your questions answered without being nickeled in that you know exactly what you’re paying every single month. And we built a community, the Conscious Capital Collective to be sort of a repository for all the downloadable materials we were sending out to people anyway. Right? There’s a live Q &A with an attorney in there every single week. There’s another coach

Brett McCollum (23:19.558)
Yeah.

Bethany (23:32.352)
which you can call just for PLG clients, from your log group clients in there every single week. So there’s multiple opportunities in a group setting to get more questions answered where you don’t have to pay any extra to do that. the reason for that, one is I don’t wanna keep track of my time. Two, I don’t wanna work for free. But three, it helps us and serves us all in this community if we’re all educated, right? A rising height and everything, know, raises all ships. So you see all these articles come out on the Wall Street Journal.

Brett McCollum (23:56.401)
Mmm.

Bethany (24:02.376)
articles bashing Main Street investment syndications and you know it’s a bunch of scammers and you know whatever and you’ve got BlackRock buying up all the real estate. I want to help protect the mom-and-pop Main Street investors be able to keep doing this and that means that we need to keep people educated and keep people doing things on the up and up so that we can keep doing this and so I provide that education in between deals before deals after deals so that people can confidently continue their business without having to worry they’re going to step in it or worried about calling me and getting charged.

Brett McCollum (24:20.08)
Right.

Bethany (24:32.176)
you know, $1,000 for a phone call.

Brett McCollum (24:34.159)
Yeah, and that’s the Conscious Capital Collective, is that correct? Yeah, that’s really cool.

Bethany (24:36.748)
Yeah, yeah. We also have the subscription model with the law firm that includes that community. So our clients still get to call us. It’s not like, go to the group call and never talk to me again, right? So our clients can still call us, but we just want to provide as many resources as possible.

Brett McCollum (24:47.547)
Right.

Brett McCollum (24:51.537)
Well, and it keeps them the ability to, and most people, don’t know about like, guess you, yeah, that’s why you created this. Most of my calls to attorneys, it’s never, it’s not, if I could rather, let me rephrase this. If I could, most of my calls to my attorneys would be just, hey, quick question.

Bethany (25:07.98)
Yeah, and almost all my calls start with that. Hey, quick question, right? And sometimes it isn’t, sometimes it isn’t, right?

Brett McCollum (25:13.829)
Well, right. But typically it’s not like, let’s, hey, can I book two hours? Cause I need two hours of your time. Most of us are like, we’re moving and we’re doing like, can I ask you this thing that’s plaguing my mind?

Bethany (25:20.864)
Right. Yeah. What if it was hourly? It would make sense for me to stretch that out into two hours. But what I find is.

There’s a finite number of ways to structure these because we only do real estate, right? Now we do some stuff that’s tangential to real estate, but it’s real estate. It’s like laundromats or whatever, but there’s only a finite number of ways and I’ve now seen them all, right? So I’ve probably already answered your question three times today. So why don’t we get on a group call and you can maybe hear what other people are asking that you don’t even have to ask now, or maybe we didn’t know you needed to ask.

Brett McCollum (25:38.801)
right?

Brett McCollum (25:57.745)
beautiful.

Bethany (26:00.362)
And so we created the group calls so that one, we could be more efficient with our time, but two, again, and you’re just starting out, you don’t even know what you don’t know yet.

Brett McCollum (26:09.733)
that part. Yeah, that’s really cool. Wow. Also, Prisha, we talked about something really cool and I’m excited. want to I’m thrilled for you, by the way. You wrote a book. Yeah, tell me more. I want to know all the details.

Bethany (26:22.752)
I did write a book, yes.

Bethany (26:27.564)
So the book is called The Power of OPE, Other People’s Everything. It’s creating exponential growth by leveraging other people’s everything. so we do my whole living.

Brett McCollum (26:37.697)
Hold on, I’m going to pause. I’m so sorry. I thought it was cool pre-show and I think it’s cool now. Because in real estate, you hear OPM, OPM, OPM, OPM. You hear it all the time. And then you say leveraging OPE and other people’s everything. That is super cool. Sorry, go ahead.

Bethany (26:56.11)
Good.

No, that’s exactly where it came from though is my whole firm is built on people leveraging OPM, other people’s money. And that is, in my opinion, the best way to grow your wealth and to create wealth is to leverage other people’s money. But there’s a lot more to it than just that. And so I was starting to learn like, well, you can’t just take other people’s money. You need more than that, especially to be safe, but also to stay sane. Right. So what I started writing these stories and I started thinking of what are some other words that we use?

Brett McCollum (27:22.001)
Mm-hmm.

Bethany (27:26.518)
And I was like, other people’s time, other people’s experience. And I just started writing stories around them and it became like, I love to write. So that’s a thing that I do for fun. And so it was just stories around all the different ways you can leverage other people. But it really also boils down to something we talked about earlier, which is not toiling for the sake of toiling. And what I mean by that is we fall into this entrepreneurial trap of we feel like we have to do everything ourselves.

It’s like, move, I’ll do it, I can do it. And just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And so I think the most important thing is to figure out what is your lane. And that means what is that you’re amazing at, but also that lights you up. Because sometimes we have to get good at stuff we don’t love, right? So what are those things that you’re amazing at and light you up? And then the goal in life, I think for most of us, if we boil it down, is to spend as much time doing just that as possible. And as little time doing anything else as possible.

And so the concept then was born of leveraging other people’s everything so you can stay in your lane as much as possible because that is where you’re doing the world the most good. And that is where you’re the happiest and that is where you’re living your extraordinary life. And that’s the best way to grow. But also the lawyer in me can’t help but say it’s also where you’re safest. You shouldn’t be doing things you suck at. You shouldn’t. It’s going to create liability. And you shouldn’t do things that you hate because you’re not going to do it to the best of your ability because you hate it. So I’m here giving you legal advice to do stuff that you love and that lights you up.

Brett McCollum (28:37.457)
Hmm.

Brett McCollum (28:41.425)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (28:45.979)
Right.

Bethany (28:51.024)
that you’re good at to stay legally safe as well. And so it just ended up becoming a whole entire book. And I finally published it a few weeks ago and we came out on the Amazon bestseller list and now we’re making a push for the New York Times bestseller list. So everybody please go buy it.

Brett McCollum (29:05.378)
Absolutely, that’s incredible. mean, yeah, so let’s make sure that we get that. That’s on Amazon in the name of the book. What’s the name of the book?

Bethany (29:15.234)
the power of OPE.

Brett McCollum (29:17.329)
power of OPE and we’re going to make sure we put that in the show notes for everybody. Okay. Power of OPE. Um, guys, I mean, if you’re in that space in any form or fashion, it reading is the best thing we can ever do. There’s so much knowledge out there and for you to be able to get direct access to like, Hey, I’m a, in 2025, I’m a real practicing attorney that does this thing.

like and you can have a book at your fingertips my gosh that’s incredibly powerful so guys check it out pull it up but yeah bethany look kind of a good segue for us if people wanted to reach out to you though get all you know get to know you like what’s the best way to do that you know what would how would that look

Bethany (29:48.59)
Thank you.

Bethany (30:01.838)
Even though I feel like I’m too old to say this, actually it’s Instagram. Bethany underscore Laflam because there’s a link to everything that I’m doing on Instagram. So that’s the easiest way to find everything that I’m doing and keep up.

Brett McCollum (30:05.051)
Yeah?

Brett McCollum (30:13.073)
That’s incredible. Yeah, seriously, Bethany is worth following. Go to the gram, check her out, pull out, go for it guys. Like it’s, I mean, it’s a no brainer. It’s an absolute no brainer to do. But Bethany, this has been a phenomenal show. I’ve enjoyed every moment of like talking to you. You’re a joy to talk to you. It’s so much fun. And guys, check her out, show notes, everything will be there. And until the next time we will see you on the next show everybody. Take care guys.

Bethany (30:29.656)
too.

Bethany (30:41.112)
Thank you.

Brett McCollum (30:43.637)
right on time.